One Dead After Runaway Horses Trample Paradegoers

Three easy tips for a tasty—and eco-friendly—Fourth

(NEWSER) - With 10% to 30% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from food, why not make this year’s Fourth of July cookout a green opportunity? In the New York Times , Brian Palmer offers some tips:

• Don’t boil your potatoes—cube and pan-fry them. That method takes less than a third of the energy, requires just 10 minutes to cook, and often tastes better.

Tourism crisis, danger of fire dampen celebrations

(NEWSER) - Fourth of July celebrations will be scaled down in many Gulf Coast towns, where the BP oil spill and cleanup effort are taking a big bite out of holiday fun. Cash-strapped governments dealing with the tourism bust have canceled fireworks displays, and some have moved their pyrotechnics inland because of fears the oily water could catch fire, reports the Miami Herald . Meanwhile, some fireworks barges are busy with the cleanup. More»

(NEWSER) - Major League Baseball will honor the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s “luckiest man” retirement speech tomorrow, part of a campaign against the disease that now bears his name, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. “It’s one of the great moments in American sports and, arguably, American popular culture,” a professor says of the speech, immortalized by Gary Cooper, playing Gehrig, in The Pride of the Yankees. More»

(NEWSER) - Looking forward to the Fourth of July fireworks? You’re probably a moron, writes Troy Patterson of Slate. Look, it’s fine if you want to use a Roman candle at the family cookout: “Doing dangerous stuff in your cousin’s backyard is an important element of American culture.” But pro fireworks are “an exercise in pomposity, aggression triumphalism and hubris,” Patterson writes. They're “meaningless nonsense.” More»

(NEWSER) - No fireworks for you, Iranian diplomats. The State Department today rescinded an invitation to Iran's envoys to attend Fourth of July celebrations at US embassies around the world, reports the Washington Times. Hillary Clinton notified her underlings that "circumstances have changed" and cited Tehran's "unjust actions." At the White House, press chief Robert Gibbs noted that no diplomats from Iran had accepted anyway. More»